Welsh National Opera is devoting its summer season largely to a celebration of Wagner’s bicentenary, and has chosen its two most accommodating venues, Cardiff’s New Millennium Centre and Birmingham Hippodrome, within which to house it.
Its opera of choice is Lohengrin, mawkishly sentimental in its grandiose story-line and with four-square music totally at odds with the purportedly untrammelled unfolding of its action.
Certainly not one of Wagner’s greatest, then, but WNO has done its heroic best in this new production. Conductor Lothar Koenigs draws well-paced, well-judged responses from the insurpassable WNO Chorus and the remarkable WNO Orchestra, where depth of string tone is balanced by trenchant, sonorous wind chording – and the fabulous off-stage and auditorium brass ensembles.
The cast is excellent: Peter Wedd pacing himself astutely as Lohengrin (though looking like disgraced MP Neil Hamilton impersonating a bank manager), Emma Bell unfailingly appealing as the typically Wagnerian virginal archetype Elsa, Susan Bickley as an understated (until her huge moments) Ortrud, last-minute replacement Claudio Otelli doing a remarkable job in the wife-manipulated role of Telramund, and Matthew Best always at his habitually commanding as King Henry the Fowler (how many names does Wagner drop in his operas? – I have a list).
We are set in a dingy fortress, which seems a relic from the Franco-Prussian War. And yet again we have functional lampshades hanging over proceedings. When will WNO ever get over this affectation?
And director Antony McDonald gives us a conclusion which defies description. This is neither in Wagner’s score nor libretto.
For shame.
